There are four proposals, contained in both the president’s 2011 deficit-reduction plan and his fiscal 2013 budget, that would increase costs to seniors by $32.9 billion over 10 years. All four proposals would begin in 2017 — after Obama leaves office:

*Expanded means testing for Medicare Parts B and D Premiums. The administration proposes to increase premiums under Medicare Part B (medical insurance) and D (prescription drugs) for higher-income seniors by 15 percent and freeze the high-income thresholds at current levels “until 25 percent of beneficiaries under parts B and D are subject to these premiums.” In 2012, only 5.1 percent of Part B enrollees and 3 percent of Part D enrollees pay higher premiums based on income, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The current thresholds for higher premiums are $85,000 for individuals and $170,000 for couples. Kaiser estimates that the income thresholds for paying higher premiums by 2035 will be equivalent to about $47,000 for individuals and $94,000 for couples “in today’s adjusted inflation dollars.” Cost to seniors: $28 billion over 10 years (pages 34-35).

*Increased Medicare Part B deductible for new beneficiaries. The administration would increase the deductibles paid by new beneficiaries by $25 in 2017, 2019 and 2021. Cost to seniors: $2 billion over 10 years (page 35).

*A copay for Medicare home-health care for new beneficiaries. There’s currently no copay. This proposal would create a new copay of $100 for each “home health episode.” Cost to seniors: $350 million over 10 years (page 35).

*Medicare Part B premium surcharge for new beneficiaries who purchase Medigap coverage. The administration would impose a Part B premium surcharge for new beneficiaries who purchase “near first-dollar Medigap coverage.” Medigap policies cover Medicare’s out-of-pocket expenses, such as copays and deductibles. The administration’s plan says Medigap provides “less incentive” to make cost-efficient health care decisions. Cost to seniors: $2.5 billion over 10 years (page 35).

"Two-tier" is the policy of giving new hires lower wages & benefits (or no benefits) than the earlier cohort of workers had. It destroys union solidarity & is a union-busting tool.

Obama's Medicare proposals insert that same 'two-tier" structure into Medicare, through both means-testing and diminished benefits for new beneficiaries.

Again, fragmenting the coalition of interests that presently supports Medicare. Why would upper-income folks support Medicare once it's 'means-tested'? They may be able to get a better deal on the private market.

Why would new beneficiaries paying higher premiums support it as it comes more & more to resemble private insurance?

If you think generational conflict is uncomfortable now, think about how it will be when one set of retirees is getting a better deal than another.

This is bad policy for the people, but great policy for finance capital.

Medicare & Social Security are being set up for failure & privatization.

1. Divide & Conquer.

Then some changes were made to the contract, and the two-tier core number concept was introduced. This placed the prospects of qualifying for benefits on a distant horizon, a horizon literally years away. I was by then essentially a full time employee, but with no sick leave, no long term disability plan, no pension benefits, and no prospect of a lay-off package in the event of a plant closure. If I was diagnosed with a serious but curable illness that required perhaps a year of hospitalization and rehabilitation, I and my family would be facing a financial disaster, with perhaps no guarantee of a job waiting for me when I recovered.

As the injustice of the situation became clear, I began to realize that economic discrimination knows no boundaries; if it works, then the system will use it to extract profit. The nominal basis for the discrimination is irrelevant, as long as it works to secure profit. The pretext for discrimination is just that, a pretext, it can be about color, race, culture, or sex, and it can be something as abstract as a number.

2. The Sacred Right of the Privileged

The sacred right of the privileged to discriminate and subdivide workers into competitive groups in order to drive down their wages to impoverished levels is surrendered only with the greatest possible resistance, and then the strategy is to give up this supposed right only in the smallest steps possible.

This is why all the historic reasons for discrimination have been fought on one front at a time. The privileged, who hold the political and financial power and ultimately the power to hire and fire, are the primary agents in the setting of the wage scales of workers and therefore are primarily responsible for wage discrimination.

This and other methods have kept the general population divided and unorganized, so that the victims of discrimination find themselves fighting injustice essentially on their own with very little help from their working class peers. The result is that the victims naturally focus on the problem immediately at hand, which is of course, the particular form of discrimination that the particular victims are suffering. Thus blacks, by and large, struggle against discrimination against blacks, women struggle against discrimination against women and so on.

This is a form of class myopia brought on by the lack of recognition and understanding that "everyone without any discrimination is entitled to equal pay for equal work" (UDHR 23(2)). It is not so much, myopia on the part of the particular victims at hand, as it is myopia on the part of the entire working class, whose eyes fail to focus on the fact that discrimination is an attack on everyone, and that its successful implementation against any subgroup of the working class means that any and all subgroups of the working class are potential victims. In the long haul we are all vulnerable and there is no security in the position of "I'm alright Jack".

The employing class are totally aware that once a union committee capitulates to their program of divisiveness and is co-opted into recommending to their fellow workers acceptance of a contract clause that, like two-tier wage language, violates the human rights of its union members, then that committee is immediately placed into the position of defending the indefensible and thus trains itself to side with the perpetrators of human rights violations...

4. Two Tiers: A Symptom of Social Decadence.

The two tier wage scheme is a blatant act of discrimination against an entire class of people, namely, the next generation. Discrimination against young people is not a viable economic solution, it's a symptom of social decadence; intellectually unsound and ethically malignant.

The parrots of the status quo insist there is no alternative to an economic system that degrades workers, deprives the unfortunate of health care, threatens the security of the elderly, and desecrates the environment. It's a lie. For the strong there is always an alternative.

The Federal Reserve Board's policy of maintaining an army of unemployed workers to curb inflation by holding down wages is impractical and cruel. We don't need to persecute the poor to secure the fortunate, anymore than we need to spread disease to find a cure.

Why heed the convoluted gibberish of Alan Greenspan or the high salaried hacks in the health insurance rackets? They defy common sense.

Social Security isn't broke, it's pilfered. Health care in America is a circus of reverse risks. The audience walks tightropes while clowns roll up the nets. Medicare for all isn't unattainable; it's the norm in every modern nation except the US. Declaring our economy sound while 45 million citizens lack health insurance, eight million are unemployed, and the mentally ill are prescribed homelessness for a treatment plan isn't hubris, its nonsense.

A nation's prosperity depends on a system of just rewards, not the degradation of the working class.